The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

The reason that there are so few good books written is that so few people who write know anything.

A good writer is not necessarily a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a read more

A good writer is not necessarily a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order read more

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he read more

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Reading is like permitting a man to talk a long time, and refusing you the right to answer.

Reading is like permitting a man to talk a long time, and refusing you the right to answer.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.

That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.

That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.